Pengfei Zhou

Assistant Professor

Department of Informatics and Networked Systems, School of Computing and Information

University of Pittsburgh

Office: 135 N Bellefield Ave, RM 710, IS Building, Pittsburgh, PA 15260

Email: pengfeizhou@pitt.edu

Hiring: I'm looking for motivated PhD students and research assistants. If you are interested in building mobile systems, feel free to contact me preferably with your CV. Check out Pitt Graduate Admissions FAQs before you apply for the program.

Biography

I'm an Assistant Professor in the Department of Informatics and Networked Systems, School of Computing and Information at the University of Pittsburgh. Prior to joining Pitt, I was a Research Scientist at Illinois ARCS, a Research Fellow at Alibaba-NTU Joint Research Institute (JRI) and a Technical Advisor for Alibaba Group. I founded fayfans Co., Ltd developing AIoT products in 2016. I received the B.E. degree in the Department of Automation from Tsinghua University, and the Ph.D. degree in the School of Computer Science and Engineering from Nanyang Technological University.

Teaching

Spring Term 2023-2024: 2244 INFSCI 3350 SEC1000 DOCTORAL SEMINAR
Fall Term 2023-2024: 2241 INFSCI 2591 SEC1250 ALGORITHM DESIGN
Spring Term 2022-2023: 2234 TELCOM 2310 SEC1000 APPLICATIONS OF NETWORKS

Research Interests

I am broadly interested in technologies and ideas that help human beings better sense and interpret our physical world so as to develop human-centered applications. Current research areas encompass Mobile Sensing and Systems, Artificial Intelligence of Things (AIoT), and Next Generation Mobile Networks.

Selected Publications (Full list)

Conference Papers

[MobiSys'24] "Invisible Optical Adversarial Stripes on Traffic Sign against Autonomous Vehicles", in ACM MobiSys, Tokyo, Japan, 3-7 June 2024. (PDF).
Dongfang Guo, Yuting Wu, Yimin Dai, Pengfei Zhou, Xin Lou, Rui Tan.

[MobiCom'23] "Practically Adopting Human Activity Recognition", in ACM MobiCom, Madrid, Spain, 2-6 Oct 2023. (PDF), (Code), (Video).
Huatao Xu, Pengfei Zhou, Rui Tan and Mo Li.

[SmartGridComm'22] "Detecting Cyber Attacks in Smart Grids with Massive Unlabeled Sensing Data", in IEEE SmartGridComm, Singapore, October 25-28, 2022. (PDF), (Code).
Hanyu Zeng, Zhen Wei Ng, Pengfei Zhou, Xin Lou, David K.Y. Yau, Marianne Winslett.

[MobiCom'22] "Experience: Adopting Indoor Outdoor Detection in On-demand Food Delivery Business", in ACM MobiCom, Sydney, Australia, October 17-21, 2022. (PDF), (Code).
Pengfei Zhou, Yi Ding, Yang Li, Mo Li, Guobin Shen, Tian He.
This paper presents the experience of business adoption of IODetector (SenSys'12).

[SenSys'21] "LIMU-BERT: Unleashing the Potential of Unlabeled Data for IMU Sensing Applications", in ACM SenSys, Coimbra, Portugal, November 15-17, 2021. (PDF), (Code), (Video).
Huatao Xu, Pengfei Zhou, Rui Tan, Mo Li, Guobin Shen.
This paper received Best Paper Award Runner-up in ACM SenSys 2021.
Invited to publish in ACM GetMobile as a research highlight, check it out here.

[IMWUT/Ubicomp'19] "Amateur: Augmented Reality based Vehicle Navigation System", in ACM IMWUT, Vol.2, No.4, Article 155, London, UK, December 2019. (PDF), (Slides).
Chu Cao, Zhenjiang Li, Pengfei Zhou, Mo Li.

[INFOCOM'17] "Large-Scale Invisible Attack on AFC Systems with NFC-Equipped Smartphones", in IEEE INFOCOM, Atlanta, USA, May 2017. (PDF).
Fan Dang, Pengfei Zhou, Zhenhua Li, Ennan Zhai, Aziz Mohaisen, Qingfu Wen, Mo Li.

[MobiCom'16] "DopEnc: Acoustic-based Encounter Profiling using Smartphones", in ACM MobiCom 2016, New York, USA. (PDF).
Huanle Zhang, Wan Du, Pengfei Zhou, Mo Li, Prasant Mopahatra.

[MobiCom'14] "Use It Free: Instantly Knowing Your Phone Attitude", in ACM MobiCom, Maui, Hawaii, USA, September 2014. (PDF), (Video).
Pengfei Zhou, Mo Li, and Guobin Shen.

[SenSys'12] "IODetector: A Generic Service for Indoor Outdoor Detection", in ACM SenSys, Toronto, Canada, November 2012. (PDF), (Code).
Pengfei Zhou, Yuanqing Zheng, Zhenjiang Li, Mo Li, and Guobin (Jacky) Shen.
This paper received Test of Time Award in ACM SenSys 2022 at Boston.

[MobiSys'12] "How Long to Wait?: Predicting Bus Arrival Time with Mobile Phone based Participatory Sensing", in ACM MobiSys, Pages 379-392, Low Wood Bay, United Kingdom, June 2012. (PDF), (Video).
Pengfei Zhou, Yuanqing Zheng, and Mo Li.

Journal Articles

[TMC] "Think Like A Graph: Real-Time Traffic Estimation at City-Scale", in IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing, Vol. 18, Issue 10, October 2019. (PDF).
Zhidan Liu, Pengfei Zhou, Zhenjiang Li, and Mo Li.

[TMC] "Pricing Data Tampering in Automated Fare Collection with NFC-equipped Smartphones", in IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing, Vol. 18, Issue 5, May 2019.
Fan Dang, Ennan Zhai, Zhenhua Li, Pengfei Zhou, Aziz Mohaisen, Kaigui Bian, Qingfu Wen, and Mo Li.

[TOSN] "Memento: An Emotion Driven Lifelogging System with Wearables", in ACM Transactions on Sensor Networks, Vol.15, Issue 1, Article 8, January 2019.
Shiqi Jiang, Pengfei Zhou, Zhenjiang Li, and Mo Li.

[TMC] "An Acoustic-based Encounter Profiling System", in IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing, Vol 17, Issue 8, Pages 1750-1763, August 2018.
Huanle Zhang, Wan Du, Pengfei Zhou, Mo Li, and Prasant Mohapatra.

[T-ITS] "A Participatory Urban Traffic Monitoring System: The Power of Bus Riders", in IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems, Vol.18, Issue 10, October 2017.
Zhidan Liu, Shiqi Jiang, Pengfei Zhou, and Mo Li.

[TOSN] "IODetector: A Generic Service for Indoor/Outdoor Detection", in ACM Transactions on Sensor Networks, Vol. 11, Issue 2, Article 28, February 2015.
Mo Li, Pengfei Zhou, Yuanqing Zheng, Zhenjiang Li, and Guobin (Jacky) Shen.

[TMC] "How Long to Wait?: Predicting Bus Arrival Time with Mobile Phone based Participatory Sensing", in IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing, Vol. 13, Issue 6, Pages 1228-1241, June 2014.
Pengfei Zhou, Yuanqing Zheng, and Mo Li.

Research Projects and Technology Transfer to Products (Project details)

☞ [Research] Attack-resilient AI-empowered autonomous cyber-physical systems (2021-present)
☞ [Research] Intelligent large scale sensing and systems with AIoT (2020-present)
☞ [Research] Improving real time video streaming in 5G networks (2020-present)
☞ [Research→Product] IODetector: The first mobile phone based solution for indoor/outdoor detection (2011-present)
☞ [Product] YuFeiMen: Smart authentication system with various interfaces (2017-2019)
☞ [Research→Product] Ensuring system security for NFC-based AFC systems (2016-2019)
☞ [Research] Instant 3D orientation estimation of mobile phones for mobile systems and gaming interfaces (2013-2015)
☞ [Research] Urban traffic informatics with crowdsensing (2011-2018)

Professional Services

Conference Chair

PhD Forum co-Chair, IPSN 2023: The ACM/IEEE International Conference on Information Processing in Sensor Networks

Demo and Poster co-Chair, ICDCS 2023: The 43rd IEEE International Conference on Distributed Computing Systems

TPC Member

SenSys 2024: The 22nd ACM Conference on Embedded Networked Sensor Systems

ICDCS 2024: 44th IEEE International Conference on Distributed Computing Systems

IoTDI 2024: 9th ACM/IEEE Conference on Internet of Things Design and Implementation

TheWebConf 2023 (WWW 2023): The 2023 ACM Web Conference (Systems and Infrastructure for Web, Mobile Web, and Web of Things Track)

IoTDI 2023: 8th ACM/IEEE Conference on Internet of Things Design and Implementation

Group Members

Bo Wu (PhD student, 2023-)

Hui Ji (PhD student, 2023-)

Hanyu Zeng (PhD student, 2024-)

Xiaotian (Jason) Dou (co-supervised PhD student, now Postdoc Research Fellow at Harvard University)

Honors and Awards

Test of Time Award, ACM SenSys, Boston, 2022.

GetMobile Research Highlight, ACM GetMobile Magazine, 2022.

Best Paper Award Runner-up, ACM SenSys, Coimbra, 2021.

Silver medal, first innovation and entrepreneurship competition for Tsinghua alumni, Beijing, 2016.

Best Demo Award, Demo video, IEEE SECON, Singapore, 2014.

Outstanding Press Operation Volunteer for Beijing Olympics, Water Cube, Beijing, 2008.

Vice President, Department Student Association, Tsinghua University, Beijing, 2008.

Talks

"Practical Mobile Sensing at Scale", University of Pittsburgh, DINS Speaker Series & Telecom Seminar, USA, March 2024.

"Practical Mobile Sensing at Scale", Pittsburgh, USA, October 2023.

"IODetector - From Research to Practice", SenSys Test of Time Award talk, Boston, USA, November 2022.

"Adopting Indoor Outdoor Detection for On-demand Food Delivery Business", MobiCom, Sydney, Australia, October 2022.

"Mobile Crowdsensing", Online, School of Computing and Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, May 2022.

"Unleashing the Potential of Unlabeled Data for IMU Sensing Applications", Global Innovation Exchange, Tsinghua University, China, November 2021.

"Intelligent Mobile Sensing: From Research to Practice", School of Computing and Information Systems, Singapore Management University, Singapore, July 2021.

"Mobile Sensing and Applications: Industry Opportunities", School of Computer Science and Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, 2017.